The stories

If anyone understands the toll of war, it's Hill Country Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Centers veterans services director Mike Cagle. He sees the aftermath walk through the door every day.

Ed Glimme wants you to take a hike. Toting a backpack up hills and down dales — or without a pack and just walking the flatlands through the La Crosse Marsh and city streets, whichever fits your stamina.

An ex-Army medic appeared lucid and coherent moments after slamming his pickup truck into a car, despite defense claims that he was temporarily insane because of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a juror.

Doctors from the Department of Veterans Affairs say that the benefits of service dogs working with the physically disabled are well-documented. Now, VA and other veterans groups hope that a new study will support the theory that they are equally beneficial to those with mental scars.

The Clay Hunt SAV Act, named after a Marine vet who committed suicide in 2011, was passed by the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and now must pass a vote in the full Senate to become law. The House overwhelmingly passed the bill with 403 votes earlier this month.

It took Navy Airman Apprentice Elena Giordano nine years to be granted service-connected disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs for the post-traumatic stress disorder she suffered after multiple sexual assaults.

Magnetic resonance therapy, a procedure that pulses energy from magnetic coils into the cerebral cortex, is a new treatment that scores of combat vets have been drawn to at private clinic in Orange County, Calif. Some of them simply call it "brain zapping."